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Totes MaGoats: A 30 By 30 Update

With only 21 days until my 30th birthday, it’s been hectic around the Huffman Homestead trying to accomplish things on my 30 By 30 list. Last week, though, I accomplished one I didn’t think would happen:

#27: Milk a cow goat.

I had been calling dairies and family-owned farms all over the state for the past three months trying to find a place to milk a cow. Most of them didn’t allow it or their cows weren’t dairy cows. But, thanks to a family friend, I WAS able to milk a goat! This goat had recently had triplets so, even though she wasn’t a dairy goat, her owner was confident that, since she was still producing milk, she could be milked.

So off to the country we went! None of us knew how to milk a goat, so the owners spoke to a family member and taught me how to do it. I was super nervous; I didn’t want to hurt the goat and I also didn’t want to get kicked in the head!

She had to be separated from her little ones for two hours before I milked her because she needed to be “full” before she could be milked. Her owners put her in a metal cage-type thing and showed me what to do. She was a little skittish at first, but once I was able to get milk out, she calmed down. It was like she let out an audible sigh of relief and I thought, “I understand ya, sister!”

I didn’t want to milk her too much–I know how precious that liquid gold can be!–and take it away from her sweet little babies. But I did get quite a bit:

It was so cool to experience that! Being a “city girl”, I haven’t had much experience with things like that, so it was interesting to get to experience even a small piece of farm life.

Plus it was so sweet to see Huff the Babe laugh and call out to the baby goats!